I have been using One Year Bible Online for my daily Bible study for almost a year. For today, One Year Bible Online links here. I started writing this blog because the only way I can get myself to read the Bible everyday is to pretend that I am teaching someone about what it says to me. I hope that by posting these ruminations others may get some benefit as well. If you have any thoughts or comments regarding these verses or what I have written about them, please post them. I hope that the Spirit is moving in others through these posts as the Spirit has definitely been convicting me.

     The people of Israel had vowed that they would not give their daughters in marriage to the men of the tribe of Benjamin because of what the men of Gibeah had done and the fact that the rest of Benjamin came to their defense. However, once they had destroyed all the Benjamites except for 600 warriors they began to regret the possible loss of one of the tribes of Israel. They sought to find wives for the remaining men of Benjamin so that the tribe might continue.
     They had also vowed that anyone from among the tribes that had refused to join the battle to punish Gibeah would be put to death. So, they took a census of those present and discovered that no one from Jabesh-gilead had attended the assembly. They sent a force to punish Jabesh-gilead and seize their unmarried women as wives for the remaining Benjamites. In this manner they found wives for 400 of the remaining 600 men of Benjamin. They told the remaining single men of Benjamin to go and capture wives from among the women of Shiloh when they went out for their dances at their annual festival to the Lord. They promised to make it right with the fathers and brothers of those so taken..
     This passage once again illustrates the dangers of hastily taken vows. That one should not make long-term commitments in haste and the heat of the moment.

     The book of Ruth starts by telling us that a man from Israel moved with his wife and two sons from Israel to Moab because of a famine in the land of Israel. The man died leaving his wife Naomi with her two sons in a foreign land. The two sons married local women, Orpah and Ruth. Then Naomi’s sons died leaving Naomi in a foreign land with her two daughters-in-law. About this time Naomi learned that God had once more blessed Israel with abundant crops, so she set out to return to her homeland. Her daughter-in-law accompanied her. However on the way, Naomi realized that if they went with her, they would be foreign women in her land and she had been a foreign woman in their land. So, Naomi told them to return to their mothers’ home, praying the Lord’s blessing on them for the kindness they had shown her and her sons. Both of her daughters-in-law resisted at first, bet eventually Orpah agreed to go home. That is the last we hear of Orpah and some have tried to draw lessons saying that Orpah’s choice was inferior to Ruth’s and shows a lack of faith in God. The passage, and no other in Scripture that I am aware of, supports this conclusion. There is no condemnation of Orpah’s choice.
     Ruth, on the other hand, insisted on continuing with Naomi making a statement of great faith, “Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.” Notice that Ruth’s commitment was not just to Naomi, it was also to the God whom Naomi worshiped and served. We often praise Ruth for her decision to accompany Naomi, and rightly so. But I think it is more instructive for us to consider Naomi. Do we live the type of lives that encourages others to leave their family, and perhaps even their country, to serve the God that we serve. Do people look at the life I live, and the way I treat them, and say, “I want to serve the God that he serves?” Do they see me and say, “I want his God to be my God?” If not, what do I have to change to make that happen? Because that is the type of person I want to be. I want people to look at me and say, “Your God will be my God.”

     As Jesus was on His way with His disciples from Judea to Galilee, He passed through Samaria. When He came to the town of Sychar, He was tired and sat down beside Jacob’s well close to noontime. Meanwhile His disciples went into the village to buy food, so that He was alone at the well. A Samaritan woman came to the well to draw water and Jesus asked her for a drink while she was drawing water. This surprised the woman because Jews generally would have nothing to do with Samaritans, especially a Jewish man with a Samaritan woman and she expressed this surprise to Jesus.
     Considering that He had just asked her for a drink, Jesus made an interesting reply. He tells her that if she knew the gift of God and who she was speaking with, she would have asked, and He would have given her living water. Which causes her to retort (paraphrasing), “This well is deep, how would you get any water out of it? And what makes you think you are better than the Patriarch Jacob?” Jesus told her that anyone who drank the water from Jacob’s well would thirst again and need to return for more, but anyone who drank of the water He would give them would never thirst again, that water would become a well springing up eternal life. The woman wanted that, she wanted to not have to return to the well, a place she had to come to in the middle of the day because she was unwelcome during the times when the other women came to draw water.
     Jesus sent her to get her husband. When she told Him that she had no husband, Jesus told her that she had had five husbands and now lived with a man who was not her husband. She then asked Him a question that I just noticed for the first time is phrased like many of the trap questions asked by the Pharisees (and I think it was sort of one). She prefaces her question by saying that He is obviously a prophet. Then she asks Him why the Jews, of which He is one, say that the only place of worship is Jerusalem, but the Samaritans say that it is Mount Gerizim, where their ancestors worshiped?
     Jesus answered her question by telling her that the time is coming when the place of worship will be neither on the mountain nor in Jerusalem. He further told her that the time has come when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth for that is the sort of worshipers God seeks. This leads her to tell Him that she knows the Messiah is coming. At that He tells her that He is the Messiah. At that point His disciples returned and the woman left her water jar and returned to town. She told the people that she had met a man who told her everything she ever did and suggested that He might be the Messiah. The people started to come out of the town to see Jesus.
     His disciples offered Jesus some food and He told them that He had food to eat that they did not know about. When they expressed confusion, He told them that His food was to do the will of the One who sent Him. He went on to tell them to look at the fields because the harvest was ready. It was time to harvest a crop for eternal life. Look at the world around you, God is sending the workers out to the harvest, are you willing to go?

     Another great psalm that lifts my spirits.

     What an important proverb to remember. Am I a faithful witness to what God has done?